After I upgraded my system from Windows 7 to Windows 8, my GTA IV game stopped working. Each time I click "Play", it will just keep loading at the loading screen. It will never complete. I've waiting more than 30 minutes before and it's still loading. Anyone might know how to fix this?

Works fine here, however I had read reports that it's best to get the Games for Windows Live client installed and updated and log into the client at least once to alleviate any problems, which is what I did and all GFWL games work fine.

Works fine here, however I had read reports that it's best to get the Games for Windows Live client installed and updated and log into the client at least once to alleviate any problems, which is what I did and all GFWL games work fine.

Thanks but when I use GFWL, it shows up nothing for my "Downloads" or inventory or whatever. What is it supposed to do?

I had the same issue. Sounds silly but the solution that worked for me was to download and install either Microsoft Flight or Age of Empires Online. Both are on Steam or you can just download from their respective sites. Either one will do.

The reason I think installing another game works for some people is that it updates requirements that GTA needs also.I have to launch game from social club too, it wont launch from desktop shortcut (it did on win 7 though)

Because it's so dependant on emulating Kevin Bacon, you might need to add both the launcher and game EXE to the firewall exceptions list. I have seen it get stuck at various pre-game screens because it doesn't always prompt for access.

If Steam has reinstalled GFWL via the setup scripts, reinstall the MS distributed setup version over the top. Games like Halo 2, GTAIV and FlatOut Ultimate Carnage have their own woefully outdated redistributable version that tends to break it.